


Over and Over

by Trojie



Series: Times Like These [2]
Category: Merlin (BBC)
Genre: Angst, Future Fic, M/M, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-07-23
Updated: 2010-07-23
Packaged: 2017-10-10 18:18:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/102667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trojie/pseuds/Trojie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>American Gods/Merlin mashup of sorts - Arthur goes hunting for his ex-manservant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Over and Over

Arthur met Guinevere in a small pub on the outskirts of the town he was living in at the time. It was a strange meeting - he was the miner's union president (a big man in a small town), she only the barmaid, and he knew as well as she that she'd have awkward questions from Lancelot when she went home that night, but it couldn't be helped. She was the only person who knew, and he needed to know this.

'Arthur, he asked me not to.'

'It's been twenty-two years, Gwen. _Twenty-two_. I want to see him. I need to.'

Gwen's eyes roamed deliberately over Arthur's suit. Plain, serviceable, hard-wearing; but still a suit. She sighed. 'You have a reputation to look after now,' she said.

'What does that have to do with anything? He came to watch me speak, Gwen, I know he's around. I need to see him.'

'Merlin thinks these things through more than you do,' is all she would say.

But she gave him the address anyway.

***

When Arthur walked up the path to Merlin's house he was met by a man coming the other way, looking rumpled and self-satisfied. He gave Arthur a grin and an encouraging eyebrow-raise as they passed.

Arthur resolved to ask Merlin about that, really, but the question went right out of his head after he pushed open the door. It didn't occur to him to knock - it never had, in centuries, ever occurred to him that Merlin would ever be doing anything that it would be bad for Arthur to walk in on.

'Arthur-' was the only word Merlin managed before Arthur strode up to him, holding his hands away from his shirt buttons, eyes on the red marks on his bare ribs. They weren't anything but pressure-marks, the kind Arthur himself used to leave on Merlin's skin in the heat of the moment and which faded faster than he liked at the time, but they were there and Arthur didn't put them there.

'What is this?'

Merlin rolled his eyes, twisted away to do up his shirt and pointedly pocket the money that lay not-inconspicuously-enough on the side-table, before saying, 'What does it look like?'

The answer hung in the air between them anyway, so Arthur asked 'Why?' instead.

'Needs must when the Devil drives?'

'This is about _money_? Merlin, I-'

Merlin slumped into a chair. 'Arthur, look around you. It's not about the money.'

'-I'd give you the - what?'

'I've got money. I've had hundreds of years to get money. It's not about money. No more than it's about money for you, what you do.'

'What do you mean, what I do? What I do isn't illegal!'

'Precisely,' said Merlin. 'What I do is. Which is why you need to _leave_,' he added.

'I'm not leaving,' Arthur said, locking his hands behind his back, trying to seem objective. _Now is not the time to play the jealous lover. You haven't had that card in your hand for a thousand years._. 'Not until you tell me what this is about.'

'Arthur, the longer you stay here, the worse this gets. You're a respected figure, and most of my neighbours have guessed what I do for a living. _Think_ about how it'll look, you sneaking out of the house of a known ... you know.'

Arthur shrugged. 'I don't care. There are other jobs. Why do _this_, Merlin, if you don't need the money?' He fought down the urge to plead.

Merlin turned his head away, plainly thinking. Finally he looked Arthur in the eyes, biting his lip. 'There are other jobs,' he said almost blandly. 'For you, Arthur, there are always other jobs. People always need leaders. You can lead them anywhere for anything and they'll know you for what you are. You'll always hang on. It's not so easy for the rest of us. We don't get spoonfed.'

'What-'

'Have you seen Gwen, lately? You know what Gwen, Guinevere, you know, the woman you married? You know what she does these days? She waits tables and pours drinks and goes home to Lancelot in the evening, and she ought to be happy, but this stupid world wants her to be torn between the two of you. She can't leave you, Arthur. She has to be stuck between the two of you. How's that for a life? She has to follow you around, wherever you go, and Lancelot has to follow after _her_. Because that's all people remember of her, because that's what they think she is.'

'That's ridiculous.' Arthur knew what Gwen did, knew she was always around, but he'd never thought ...

Merlin's eyes widened for a moment, before he laughed a little bitterly. 'Did you never wonder why we're never far from you?'

'I-'

'Of course you didn't wonder. Well, and why would you? Being a self-important prat is how you live.' Merlin leant forward, resting his chin on his hands, elbows propped on his knees. 'Sit down, for God's sake, Arthur. Tell me, how did I make my living in your court?' he asked, as if he were speaking to a small child.

Arthur dropped into a chair, scowling at being ordered around. 'You were my manservant,' he said. 'And then you were my Court Sorceror.'

'Precisely. Tell me, how many manservants and sorcerors find employment in this day and age? When you've got miners walking out of pits all over the damned place?'

All right, well, when Merlin put it that way, Arthur was hard-pressed to argue with him. At least on that point. 'But there are other things you could do,' he offered, perhaps a tad weakly.

'Jobs are bloody hard to come by these days, Arthur. Especially jobs in little towns like this.'

'You could move,' Arthur said, and felt stupid as soon as he did.

'No, I can't,' Merlin said, a soft, pitying look on his face. 'I go where you go. I have to. Merlin's not Merlin without King Arthur, remember? And I'm not Merlin if I don't do magic, either. Which is the whole point, really.'

'But you're not,' Arthur pointed out. 'Doing magic, I mean.'

'Oh, I am,' said Merlin, and he grinned suddenly, a golden colour tinting his eyes. Arthur suddenly felt too warm, restless, with the sensation of touch playing across his skin. He started pulling at his tie before he knew what he was doing.

'Stop that,' he said. And, 'so be with me. Come live with me, and be my love, as the poet said.'

'Yes, because that will certainly work.'

'And your doing this will?' Arthur asked, clenching his fists and his teeth. This was cruel, Merlin's magic ghosting around him, reminding him of what they used to have. What he wanted more than anything, had wanted for hundreds of years, to have back again. _Arthur's no Arthur without Merlin, either_. But no-one believes King Arthur and Merlin were ever in love. Close, yes, but not close enough. Not that close.

There were dark circles under Merlin's eyes that Arthur had only just noticed.

'It's worked so far. Please Arthur. We're both doing okay this time. Please, let it go,' Merlin said, dropping the spell.

Arthur refused to look away even after it ended, knowing Merlin could read him and not caring. _He needs to see. He thinks I don't know what it costs him to stay so close to me - he has to see what it means to me that he stays away_.

Merlin's eyes dropped first. He turned his head away, apparently vitally interested in his single houseplant. 'These days, a good shag is about the only magic anyone will believe in. And even then they're usually too ashamed to admit they do. But they do. And they get the magic they're looking for, and I get ... how they feel afterwards.'

'I always did believe,' Arthur said softly. Just pointing it out. 'You always made me see stars.'

Merlin made the three steps from his chair to Arthur's, settling himself over Arthur's thighs, heavy and familiar. His eyes were still swirling golden at the edges, his pupils wide and black and open. There was a bitemark on his lip.

'I could do it again,' he offered. 'On the house, for a good customer.' He phrased it like a joke, but looking away, he added, 'I wouldn't do this if I didn't have to, Arthur. It won't be forever.'

Arthur smoothed the dark hair out of Merlin's eyes, held him tight. 'No, it won't,' he said. 'It won't.' He said it like a prayer, where Merlin had said it like a promise. Merlin was doing this job to survive when Arthur would have shot himself first rather than even start.

The space between them felt like forever, but it wasn't going to be. There was a _someday_ there. There had been for a long time. But someday wasn't going to be today. Arthur could already feel the push of wrongness, that motion-sick feeling in the pit of his stomach, as his desires and the will of the world collided.

Outside, Arthur knew, there could be people waiting behind net curtains to telephone the papers. Outside waited the end of his career, perhaps. Ten years of work down the drain. Ten years of people's hard-won faith, was more to the point. Ten years' worth of anchoring trust, trust that let Arthur walk the earth and wait for whatever he was supposed to do at the end of it.

Inside, though, there was Merlin, and twenty-two years that had passed without remark. Twenty-two years _\- twenty-two years? Less? More? Twenty-two's just how long you haven't seen him, is all -_ of someone else's fingers on Merlin's skin.

_We can't just believe in each other, that's not how this works._

Merlin whispered things into the air between them as Arthur slid his hands underneath Merlin's clothes, trying to claw someday closer. _Screw tomorrow. I want today._

I believe in you, I do. If no-one else ever did, I would.

'I never stopped,' Merlin gasped when he could, when Arthur let him catch his breath. 'Couldn't stop, couldn't leave you behind. I followed - I followed you, I watched you, I didn't want to, Arthur, I didn't, I wanted to leave it how we said it had to be, we tried so hard _Christ, please_ I couldn't stay away, had to see you, _God_, those times in bars, Arthur, we were _stupid_ -'

'-not supposed to be together til the end-' Arthur said, like he was trying to talk himself out of what he was doing, Merlin grabbing him close like it was the end anyway.

'-and you were always so bright but I was fading, _God, Arthur_, no-one knew who I was and I wanted it that way but it was like I let the world go, my fingers slipped, I fell out of a tree I climbed to sleep in, to watch you, I fell out and I fell through it, I couldn't, _please Arthur, please, like that_, my fingers slipped out of the world when I stopped doing magic-'

'- I put down my sword and it felt like I left my heart behind, _yes, just-_ even when I took it up again it never came back, you weren't _with_ me, -'

'- that last time, sixty-two, I walked out of the bar and I thought I'd talk to you later but there was never time and then you were here and I couldn't, I couldn't Arthur, couldn't turn up on your doorstep after I'd started this, didn't want you to see me like this, it wasn't just the world, I wanted to follow, wanted to- '

They talked over and under each other, moving in counterpoint like they always used to - the movements practised, the talking rough and hurried, more important than anything else. Merlin was hot over Arthur's lap, but that's just what Arthur remembered afterwards - at the time the only thing he knew was Merlin's words digging their hole in his mind.

_I need them to live, but I live for you. I want to live for you. Let me take what I need from them because one day you'll need me. Believe me, I would never betray you. Believe me._

Believe in me.

***

'You need to go,' Merlin said. 'It's dark, you can slip away.'

'I'm comfortable here.'

'You'd be more comfortable at home.'

'Anyone would think you were trying to get rid of me,' Arthur pointed out mildly.

'It's for your own good,' said Merlin wearily. 'Your unionists-'

'Screw my unionists,' said Arthur, tugging Merlin closer.

'That's my job,' Merlin said with a grin that was only slightly sad around the edges. 'For now.'


End file.
